Velero — Backup, Migrate & Disaster Recovery for Kubernetes

What it is

Velero is an open-source tool for backing up and restoring Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes. It provides disaster recovery, data migration between clusters, and scheduled backups to object storage (S3, GCS, Azure Blob). Velero is the standard tool in the Kubernetes ecosystem for cluster-level backup and restore operations.

Velero is designed for platform teams and cluster administrators who need reliable backup, migration, and disaster recovery for Kubernetes workloads.

How it saves time or tokens

Without Velero, backing up a Kubernetes cluster means manually exporting resources with kubectl, scripting volume snapshots, and building restore procedures from scratch. Velero handles all of this with a single CLI. A full cluster backup that would require a custom script runs in one command: velero backup create. Scheduled backups, retention policies, and selective restore (by namespace, label, or resource type) are built in.

How to use

1. Install the Velero CLI:

brew install velero

1. Install Velero in your cluster with an S3-compatible backend:

velero install \
  --provider aws \
  --plugins velero/velero-plugin-for-aws:v1.9.0 \
  --bucket my-backup-bucket \
  --backup-location-config region=us-east-1 \
  --secret-file ./credentials-velero

1. Create a backup and restore:

# Backup entire cluster
velero backup create full-backup

# Backup a specific namespace
velero backup create staging-backup --include-namespaces staging

# Restore from backup
velero restore create --from-backup full-backup

Example

Scheduled daily backups with 30-day retention:

velero schedule create daily-backup \
  --schedule='0 2 * * *' \
  --ttl 720h \
  --include-namespaces production,staging \
  --snapshot-volumes

This creates a daily backup at 2 AM UTC, retains backups for 30 days, includes only production and staging namespaces, and snapshots persistent volumes.

Related on TokRepo

• DevOps tools — Browse Kubernetes and infrastructure tools
• Self-hosted tools — Explore self-hosted infrastructure solutions

Common pitfalls

• Not testing restores regularly. A backup is worthless if the restore procedure has not been validated. Run periodic restore drills to a test cluster.
• Forgetting to include --snapshot-volumes for stateful workloads. Without this flag, Velero backs up Kubernetes resources (YAML) but not the data in persistent volumes.
• Using the wrong storage provider plugin. Velero requires a plugin matching your object storage provider. Using the AWS plugin with GCS will fail silently.
• Starting with an overly complex configuration instead of defaults. Begin with the minimal setup, verify it works, then customize incrementally. This approach catches configuration errors early and keeps troubleshooting straightforward.